Announcing the Winners of the Shopify Design Awards

The goal was to celebrate the talented designers that create and customize themes for the Shopify platform and showcase the best ecommerce sites that display exceptional design, creativity, and usability.

In order to participate, designers were required to submit a screenshot of a live and working ecommerce site that they had designed and created. In addition to becoming a featured Shopify Expert, prizes for the competition include a $5,000 Apple gift card for the winner and $500 Apple gift cards for the two runners-up.

Watch this video featuring the winner, Out of the Sandbox's design for Whipping Post:

The Judges

When we were creating the Design Awards, we knew we needed an expert panel of judges to go through the submissions and pick the best of the best. Here they are:

Shopify's very own Chief Design Officer, Daniel is responsible for managing the design team, its good looks, as well as UI and UX design. He is passionate about design, photography and composing music.

The Winners

To determine the winners our judges took into account the overall aesthetics, creativity and usability of each site. Without further ado, here they are:

Winner: Whipping Post

Tina: Whipping Post is a beauty of an ecommerce store: a clean, well balanced site, beautifully echoing the design of their products. The Whipping Post site feels thoughtful and intentional: Strong photography, tasteful typography, appropriate white space, as well a beautifully balanced color palette. An e-commerce site should first and foremost celebrate and elevate the products, Whipping Post does that.

1st Runner-Up: Greats Brand

Daniel: GREATS shows off big images in a catalog grid style fashion. The crisp photography gives me a good sense of the texture and quality. I am immediately drawn in, clicking through handsome footwear, only to see it all beautifully deconstructed on a very focussed product page. GREATS delivers a very well designed & tangible experience (try rotating the shoes).

2nd Runner-up: Goodwin + Goodwin

Jeffrey: When your product epitomizes beauty and elegance of design, your website and shopping cart had better demonstrate those same virtues. Designers and design fans will be scrutinizing every pixel, ready to pounce on the smallest imperfection. Fortunately, the browsing and shopping experience at Goodwin + Goodwin's website lives up to the high bar set by the company's product line. The photography is exquisite; the hierarchy's clear; the type has been well considered, from the home page, through the category and detail pages, right into the shopping cart. The color palette is neat and warm; and the responsiveness of the layout, if not ground-breaking, is cleanly and elegantly done. The home pages and landing pages could stand a bit more copy, but what's there is choice. A beautiful site. And an effective one. I got lost shopping when I was supposed to be judging.

Congratulations to all our winners!

Honorable Mentions

We received so many amazing submissions that it was impossible for us not to showcase some of them. Here are 10 'honorable mentions' that we think look great. As a special bonus, we've decided to award these designers with $250 Apple gift cards.